Catching up on some great news from earlier in the summer – congratulations to both Kaitlyn Toy and Leandro Pimentel Marcelino, two CCNY Biochemistry graduates who’d done undergraduate honors dissertations in my group earlier in their careers.
Kaitlyn, who was in the Macaulay Honors College and won the department’s Ward Medal for best academic record, did her honors work on biochemical and biophysical characterization of novel blue-light regulated histidine kinases (as reported here, among other places). She’s off to work in Gad Getz’s lab at the Broad Institute as the next step in her career with long-term interests in biotech.
Leandro, who was supported by CCNY’s NIH MARC/RISE program during his time in the lab, conducted research into novel protein/ligand interactions in bHLH-PAS proteins. He presented aspects of this work at two ABRCMS meetings and co-authored a recent paper on these as well. With support from NSF, he’s doing a year-long postbac project in the lab before heading off to a Ph.D. program in biomedical sciences with interest at continuing in the drug discovery field.
Congrats again to both Kaitlyn & Leandro for their hard work and best wishes as they start the next stages of their careers!